All Files: HTTP A ragtime composed by W.C. Handy and recorded by Handy's Orchestra of Memphis (according to redhotjazz.com) in 1917 in New York. (Columbia A2420, Columbia 2913)
Also available at http://www.archive.org/details/Free_20s_Jazz_Collection
This audio is part of the collection: Open Source AudioArtist/Composer: W.C. HandyDate: 1917-09-22Keywords: ragtime; jazz; 1910s; dixieland; W.C. Handy; 1917
Creative Commons license: Public Domain
Handy remains among the most influential of American
songwriters. Though he was one of many musicians who played the distinctively American form of music known as the
blues, he is credited with giving it its contemporary form. While Handy was not the first to publish music in the blues form, he took the
blues from a not very well-known regional music style to one of the dominant forces in American music.
Handy was an educated musician who used
folk material in his compositions. He was scrupulous in documenting the sources of his works, which frequently combined stylistic influences from several performers. He loved this folk musical form and brought his own transforming touch to it.
Handy was a deeply religious man, whose influences in his musical style were found in the church music he sang and played as a youth, and in the sounds of nature in
Florence.
He cited the sounds of nature, such as "
whippoorwills, bats and hoot owls and their outlandish noises", the sounds of Cypress Creek washing on the fringes of the woodland, and "the music of every songbird and all the symphonies of their unpremeditated art" as inspiration.
Growing up he apprenticed in
carpentry,
shoemaking and
plastering. He bought his first
guitar which he had seen in a local shop window and had secretly saved for by picking berries, nuts and making lye soap, without his parents' permission. His father, dismayed at his actions, asked him, "What possessed you to bring a sinful thing like that into our Christian home?" Ordering Handy to "Take it back where it came from", his father quickly enrolled him in
organ lessons. Handy's days as an organ student were short lived, and he moved on to learn the
cornet.
[edit]Musical and social development
Handy joined a local band as a teenager, but he kept this fact a secret from his parents. He purchased a cornet from a fellow band member and spent every free minute practicing it.
While in Florence he belonged to a "shovel brigade" at the McNabb furnace, and described the music made by the workers as they beat shovels, altering the tone while thrusting and withdrawing the metal part against the iron buggies to pass the time while waiting for the overfilled furnace to digest its ore, "With a dozen men participating, the effect was sometimes remarkable...It was better to us than the music of a martial drum corps, and our rhythms were far more complicated."
[1] He would note that "Southern Negroes sang about everything...They accompany themselves on anything from which they can extract a musical sound or rhythmical effect...". He would later reflect that, "In this way, and from these materials, they set the mood for what we now call blues".
[2]
In September 1892, Handy traveled to
Birmingham, Alabama to take a teaching exam, which he passed easily. He obtained a teaching job in Birmingham but soon learned that the teaching profession paid poorly. He quit the position and found work at a pipe works plant in nearby
Bessemer.
During his off-time, he organized a small string orchestra and taught musicians how to read notes. Later, Handy organized the Lauzetta Quartet. When the group read about the upcoming World's Fair in Chicago, they decided to attend. The trip to Chicago was long and arduous. To pay their way, group members performed at odd jobs along the way. They finally arrived in Chicago only to learn that the World's Fair had been postponed for a year. The group then headed to
St. Louis but working conditions there proved to be very bad. The Lauzetta Quartet disbanded and Handy subsequently left St. Louis for
Evansville, Indiana.
In Evansville, Handy's luck changed dramatically. He joined a successful band which performed throughout the neighboring cities and states. While performing at a barbecue in
Henderson,
Kentucky, he met Elizabeth Price. They married shortly afterwards on July 19, 1896.
His musical endeavors were varied, and he sang first
tenor in a
minstrel show, moved from Alabama and worked as a
band director,
choral director, cornetist and
trumpeter. At age 23, he was band master of Mahara's Colored Minstrels.
W.C. Handy, ca. 1900, Director of the Alabama Agriculture & Mechanical College Band
As a young man, he played
cornet in the
Chicago World's Fair in 1893, and in 1902 he traveled throughout
Mississippi listening to various musical styles played by ordinary
Negroes. The instruments most often used in many of those songs were the
guitar,
banjo and to a much lesser extent, the
piano. His remarkable memory served him well, and he was able to recall and transcribe the music he heard in his travels. In particular, he noted in his autobiography
a blues-like guitarist he heard in
Tutwiler, Mississippi.
Shortly after his marriage to Elizabeth Price in 1896, he was invited to join a minstrel group called "Mahara's Minstrels." In their three-year tour, they traveled to Chicago, throughout
Texas and
Oklahoma, through
Tennessee,
Georgia and
Florida on to
Cuba, and Handy was paid a salary of $6 per week. Upon their return from their Cuban engagements, they traveled north through
Alabama, and stopped to perform in
Huntsville, Alabama. Growing weary from life on the road, it was there he and his wife decided to stay with relatives in his nearby hometown of Florence.
An important factor in his musical development and in
music history, was his enthusiasm for the distinctive style of uniquely American music, then often considered inferior to
European classical music. He was soon disheartened to discover that American music was often cast aside by the college and instead it emphasized foreign music considered to be "classical". Handy felt he was underpaid and felt he could make more money touring with a minstrel group. After a dispute with AAMC President Councill, he resigned his teaching position to rejoin the Mahara Minstrels to tour the
Midwest and
Pacific Northwest. In 1903 he was offered the opportunity to direct a black band named the Knights of Pythias, located in
Clarksdale, Mississippi. Handy accepted and remained there six years.
In 1903 while waiting for a train in Tutwiler, in the Mississippi Delta, Handy had the following experience. "A lean loose-jointed Negro had commenced plunking a guitar beside me while I slept... As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars....The singer repeated the line three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest music I had ever heard."
[2][3]
Partway through the evening, while playing a dance in Cleveland, Mississippi (circa 1905
[1]), Handy was given a note that asked for “our native music”. After playing an old-time Southern melody, Handy was asked if he would object if a local colored band played a few numbers. Three young men with a battered guitar, mandolin, and a worn out bass took the stage.
[4] (In recounting the same story to Dorthy Scarborough circa 1925, Handy remembered a banjo, guitar, and fiddle.
[5]) “They struck up one of those over and over strains that seem to have no beginning and certainly no ending at all. The strumming attained a disturbing monotony, but on and on it went, a kind of stuff associated with cane rows and levee camps. Thump-thump-thump went their feet on the floor. It was not really annoying or unpleasant. Perhaps “haunting” is the better word.”
[4] [6]
Handy also noted square dancing by Negroes in Mississippi with "one of their own calling the figures, and crooning all of his calls in the key of G."
[7] He would later recall this experience when deciding on the key for "St Louis Blues". "It was the memory of that old gent who called figures for the Kentucky breakdown-the one who everlastingly pitched his tones in the key of G and moaned the calls like a presiding elder preaching at a revival meeting. Ah, there was my key-I'd do the song in G."
[8]
In describing "blind singers and footloose bards" around Clarksdale, Handy wrote, "surrounded by crowds of country folks, they would pour their hearts out in song"... They earned their living by selling their own songs - "ballets," as they called them-and I'm ready to say in their behalf that seldom did their creations lack imagination."
[9]
[]Transition: popularity, fame and business
Handy's first popular success, "Memphis Blues". Recorded by Victor Military Band, July 15, 1914. Length 2:58.
The 1912 publication of his "Memphis Blues" sheet music introduced his style of 12-bar blues to many households and was credited as the inspiration for the invention of the
foxtrot dance step by
Vernon and Irene Castle, a New York–based dance team. Some consider it to be the first blues song. He sold the rights to the song for US$100. By 1914, when Handy was at the age of 40, his musical style was asserted, his popularity increased significantly, and he composed prolifically.
Handy wrote the following regarding his use of what he heard in folk song. "The primitive southern Negro, as he sang, was sure to bear down on the third and seventh tone of the scale, slurring between major and minor. Whether in the cotton field of the Delta or on the Levee up St. Louis way, it was always the same. Till then, however, I had never heard this slur used by a more sophisticated Negro, or by any white man. I tried to convey this effect... by introducing flat thirds and sevenths (now called blue notes) into my song, although its prevailing key was major..., and I carried this device into my melody as well... This was a distinct departure, but as it turned out, it touched the spot."
[10] Again referring to "what have since become known as "blue notes"", Handy states that "the transitional flat thirds and seventh in my melody" were his attempt "to suggest the typical slurs of the Negro voice".
[11]Regarding the "three-chord basic harmonic structure" of the blues, Handy wrote that the "(tonic, subdominant, dominant seventh) was that already used by Negro roustabouts, honky-tonk piano players, wanderers and others of the underprivileged but undaunted class".[13]"The three-line structure I employed in my lyric was suggested by a song I heard Phil Jones sing in Evansville...While I took the three-line stanza as a model for my lyric, I found its repetition too monotonous... Consequently I adopted the style of making a statement, repeating the statement in the second line, and then telling in the third line why the statement was made."[12]
Another detail was noted, "In the folk blues the singer fills up occasional gaps with words like 'Oh, lawdy' or 'Oh, baby' and the like. This meant that in writing a melody to be sung in the blues manner one would have to provide gaps or waits."
[14]
Handy detailed the sources for his creations in his autobiography, as detailed above, and noted that, "it should be clear by now that my blues are built around or suggested by, rather than constructed of, the snatches, phrases, cries and idioms such as I have illustrated.”
[15]
Writing about the first time St Louis Blues was played (1914),
[16] Handy notes that "The one-step and other dances had been done to the tempo of Memphis Blues...When St Louis Blues was written the tango was in vogue. I tricked the dancers by arranging a tango introduction, breaking abruptly into a low-down blues. My eyes swept the floor anxiously, then suddenly I saw lightening strike. The dancers seemed electrified. Something within them came suddenly to life. An instinct that wanted so much to live, to fling its arms to spread joy, took them by the heels."
[17]
Because of the difficulty of getting his works published, he published many of his own works. In 1917, he and his business moved to New York City where he had offices in the
Gaiety Theatre office building in
Times Square.
[18]. By the end of that year, his most successful songs: "Memphis Blues", "Beale Street Blues", and "
St. Louis Blues", had been published. That year the
Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a white
New Orleans jazz ensemble, had recorded the very first
jazz record and introduced jazz music to a wide segment of the American public. Handy initially had little fondness for this new "jazz" music, but bands dove into the repertoire of W. C. Handy compositions with enthusiasm, making many of them
jazz standards.
While trying to establish his Memphis band, Handy complained to his Aunt Matt Jordan that other bands made mistakes while his men played "perfect". His Aunt remarked, "Honey, white folks like to hear colored folks make some mistakes." "In this one remark", wrote Handy, "can be hidden the source or secret of jazz."
[19]
Handy's foray into
publishing was noteworthy for several reasons. Not only were his works groundbreaking because of his
ethnicity, but he was among the first blacks who were successful because of it. He self-published his works. In 1912, Handy met
Harry H. Pace at the Solvent Savings Bank in Memphis. Pace was
valedictorian of his graduating class at
Atlanta University and student of
W. E. B. Du Bois. By the time of their meeting, Pace had already demonstrated a strong understanding of
business. He earned his reputation by recreating failing businesses. Handy liked him, and Pace later became manager of Pace and Handy Sheet Music.
While in New York City, Handy noted that "..I was under the impression that these Negro musicians would jump at the chance to patronize one of their own publishers. They didn't... The Negro musicians simply played the hits of the day...They followed the parade. Many white bands and orchestra leaders, on the other hand, were on the alert for novelties. They were therefore the ones most ready to introduce our numbers." But, "Negro vaudeville artists...wanted songs that would not conflict with white acts on the bill. The result was that these performers became our most effective pluggers."[20]Sometime during his association with Pace, Handy recounted the following experience with racism, one of many during his life time. "One morning, while passing the square on Beale Street that bears my name, I noticed a crowd of Negroes gathered around a skull. The day before, that skull had belonged to a pleasant, easy-going young fellow named Tom Smith. Now it was severed from his body. The eyes had been burned out with red hot irons. A rural mob, not satisfied with burying his body, had brought the skull back to town and tossed it into a crowd of Negroes to humiliate and intimidate them... All the brutal, savage acts I had seen wrecked against unfortunate human beings came back to torment me-particularly those in which the luckless one came near being myself."
[15]
Handy associated with individuals such as
Al Bernard, "a young white man" with a "soft Southern accent" who "could sing all my Blues". Handy sent Bernard to Thomas Edison to be recorded, which resulted in "an impressive series of successes for the young artist, successes in which we proudly shared". Handy also published the original "
Shake Rattle and Roll" and "Saxophone Blues", both written by Bernard. "Two young white ladies from Selma, Alabama (Madelyn Sheppard and Annelu Burns) contributed the songs "Pickaninny Rose" and "O Saroo", with the music published by Handy's company. These numbers, plus our blues, gave us a reputation as publishers of Negro music."
[21]
"Ole Miss Rag", a
ragtimecomposed by W. C. Handy and recorded by Handy's Orchestra of Memphis in 1917 in New York.
Expecting to make only "another hundred or so" on a third recordng of his "Yellow Dog Blues" (originally titled "Yellow Dog Rag"
[22] ), Handy signed a deal with the
Victor company. The Joe Smith
[23] recording of this song (1919) became the best-selling recording of Handy's music to date.
[24] [25]
Attempts "to introduce colored girls for recording our blues" were initially unsuccessful. "We were making too much money evidently." In 1920 however, Perry Bradford was able to get Mamie Smith to record two non blues songs written by himself, and published by Handy accompanied by a white band: "That Thing Called Love" and "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down". When Bradford's "Crazy Blues" became a hit as recorded by Smith, "Colored blues singers, being in great demand, were contracted forthwith." With the bitterness of sharp competition, "Our business began to fall away as steadily as it had grown."
[26]
In 1920 Pace amicably dissolved his long-standing partnership with Handy, with whom he also collaborated as
lyricist. As Handy wrote: "To add to my woes, my partner withdrew from the business. He disagreed with some of my business methods, but no harsh words were involved. He simply chose this time to sever connection with our firm in order that he might organize Pace Phonograph Company, issuing
Black Swan Records and making a serious bid for the Negro market. . . . With Pace went a large number of our employees. . . . Still more confusion and anguish grew out of the fact that people did not generally know that I had no stake in the Black Swan Record Company."
[27]
Although Handy's
partnership with Pace was dissolved, he continued to operate the publishing company as a family-owned business. He published works of other black composers as well as his own, which included more than 150
sacredcompositions and
folk song arrangements and about sixty blues compositions. In the 1920s, he founded the Handy Record Company in New York City.
W.C. Handy celebrating his 65th birthday at the Cotton Club.
In 1926 Handy authored and edited a work entitled Blues: An Anthology—Complete Words and Music of 53 Great Songs. It is probably the first work that attempted to record, analyze and describe the blues as an integral part of the U.S. South and thehistory of the United States.
So successful was Handy's "St. Louis Blues" that in 1929, he and
director Kenneth W. Adams collaborated on a
RCA motion picture project of the same name, which was to be shown before the main attraction. Handy suggested blues singer
Bessie Smith have the starring role, since she had gained widespread popularity with that tune. The picture was shot in June and was shown in movie houses throughout the United States from 1929 to 1932.
The
genre of the blues was a hallmark of American society and culture in the 1920s and 1930s. So great was its influence, and so much was it recognized as Handy's hallmark, that author
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his novel
The Great Gatsby that "All night the saxophones wailed the hopeless comment of the "Beale Street Blues" while a hundred pairs of golden and silver slippers shuffled the shining dust. At the gray tea hour there were always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low, sweet fever, while fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the sad horns around the floor."
Later life
W.C. Handy at Harlem Hospital with hundreds of get-well cards & telegrams.
Following publication of his
autobiography, Handy published a book on
African-American musicians entitled
Unsung Americans Sing (1944). He wrote a total of five books:
- Blues: An Anthology: Complete Words and Music of 53 Great Songs
- Book of Negro Spirituals
- Father of the Blues: An Autobiography
- Unsung Americans Sing
- Negro Authors and Composers of the United States
During this time, he lived on
Strivers' Row in
Harlem. He became blind following an accidental fall from a
subway platform in 1943. After the death of his first wife, he remarried in 1954. At age 80 he married his
secretary Irma Louise Logan, whom he frequently said had become his eyes.
Compositions
- "Memphis Blues", written 1909, published 1912. Although usually subtitled "Boss Crump", it is a distinct song from Handy's campaign satire, "Boss Crump don't 'low no easy riders around here", which was based on the good-time song "Mamma Don't Allow It."
- "Yellow Dog Blues" (1912), "Your easy rider's gone where the Southern cross the Yellow Dog." The reference is to the Southern Railway and the local Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad, called the Yellow Dog. By Handy's telling locals assigned the words "Yellow Dog" to the letters Y.D. on the freight trains that they saw.[28]
- "St. Louis Blues" (1914), "the jazzman's Hamlet."
- "Loveless Love", based in part on the classic, "Careless Love". Possibly the first song to complain of modernsynthetics, "with milkless milk and silkless silk, we're growing used to soulless soul."
- "Aunt Hagar's Blues", the biblical Hagar, handmaiden to Abraham and Sarah, was considered the "mother" of theAfrican Americans.
- "Beale Street Blues" (1916), written as a farewell to the old Beale Street of Memphis (actually called Beale Avenue until the song changed the name); but Beale Street did not go away and is considered the "home of the blues" to this day. B.B. King was known as the "Beale Street Blues Boy" and Elvis Presley watched and learned from Ike Turnerthere.
- "Long Gone John (From Bowling Green)", tribute to a famous bank robber.
- "Chantez-Les-Bas (Sing 'Em Low)", tribute to the Creole culture of New Orleans.
- "Atlanta Blues", includes the song known as "Make Me a Pallet on your Floor" as its chorus.
- "Ole Miss Rag" (1917), a ragtime composition, recorded by Handy's Orchestra of Memphis[29].
Performances and honors
W.C. Handy, age 75, appearing in Billy Rose's "Violins Over Broadway", is introduced by Cab Calloway.
- On April 27, 1928 he performed a program of jazz, blues, plantation songs, work songs, piano solos, spirituals and a Negro rhapsody in Carnegie Hall.
- In 1938 he performed at the National Folk Festival in Washington, DC, his first national performance on a desegregated stage.
- He performed at the Chicago World's Fair in 1933 and 1934 and the New York World's Fair in 1939 and 1940.
- In 1940, NBC broadcast an all-Handy program as part of its weekly series The Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street. His songs were performed by Dinah Shore and by the composer himself.
- Louis Armstrong plays W.C.Handy (1954)
- He is referenced in Prof. Harold Hill's lead-in to the song Seventy-Six Trombones inMeredith Willson's 1957 musical The Music Man.
- In 1958, a movie about his life - appropriately entitled St. Louis Blues - was released starring legendary African-American musicians Nat "King" Cole (in the main role),Pearl Bailey, Mahalia Jackson, Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, and Eartha Kitt. It was released the year of Handy's death.
- On May 17, 1969, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stampin his honor.
- Inducted in the National Academy of Popular Music Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.
- He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1983.
- He is referenced in Joni Mitchell's 1975 song Furry Sings the Blues.
- He is referenced in Marc Cohn's 1991 song Walking in Memphis, covered byLonestar, Cher, and other artists. "...Touched down in the land of the Delta Blues, in the middle of the pouring rain. W.C. Handy, won't you look down over me?"
- He received a Grammy Trustees Award for his lifetime achievements in 1993.
- He was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1985, and was a 1993 Inductee into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, with the Lifework Award for Performing Achievement.
- Citing 2003 as "the centennial anniversary of when W.C. Handy composed the first Blues music..." the United States Senate in 2002 passed a resolution declaring the year beginning February 1, 2003 as the "Year of the Blues."
- Each November 16, Handy's birthday is celebrated with free music, birthday cake and free admission to the W.C. Handy Museum in Florence, Alabama. The hand-hewn log cabin made by his grandfather is his birthplace and museum.
- An autographed 1937 photo from W.C. Handy to Anton Lada of Lada's Louisiana Orchestra sold for $850 in 2006.
Awards, festivals and memorials
- The Blues Music Award, widely recognized as the most prestigious award for blues artists was known as the W. C. Handy Award until the name change in 2006.
- The W. C. Handy Music Festival is held annually in the Muscle Shoals area of Florence, Alabama. Previous week-long festivals have featured jazz and blues legends including Jimmy Smith, Ramsey Lewis, Dizzy Gillespie, Bobby Blue Bland, Diane Schuur, Billy Taylor, Dianne Reeves and Charlie Byrd, Ellis Marsalis and Take 6. The festival also features a roster of annual regulars, called the W. C. Handy Jazz All-Stars.
- W. C. Handy Park is a city park located on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. The park contains a life-sized bronze statue of Handy.
- The W.C. Handy Blues & Barbeque Festivalis a week-long musical event that features blues and Zydeco bands from across the U.S and is held every June on the banks of the Ohio River in downtown Henderson, Kentucky.
- In 1979, New York City joined the list of institutions and municipalities to honor Handy by naming one block of West 52nd Street in Manhattan "W.C. Handy Place".
]See also
- St. Louis Blues (film)-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[]References
- Father of the Blues: An Autobiography. by W.C. Handy, edited by Arna Bontemps: foreword by Abbe Niles. Da Capo paperback, New York; Macmillan, (1941) ISBN 0306804212.
- ^ Father of the Blues by William Christopher Handy. 1941 MacMillan page 140
- ^ a b Father of the Blues by William Christopher Handy. 1941 MacMillan page 74
- ^ "Waiting for the train at Tutwiler", Triple Threat Blues Band
- ^ a b Father of the Blues: An Autobiography By W. C. Handy, Arna Wendell Bontemps Contributor Abbe Niles Published by Da Capo Press, 1991 pages 76,77. ISBN 0306804212, 9780306804212
- ^ On The Trail Of Negro Folk-Songs. by Dorthy Scarborough, assisted by Ola Lee Gulledge. Harvard University Press. 1925. page 269.
- ^ Richard Crawford, America's Musical Life: A History, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001, pp. 536, 537 ISBN 0393048101
- ^ W.C. Handy, Father of the BluesNew York: MacMillan, 1941, p. 85
- ^ William Christopher Handy, Father of the Blues, New York: MacMillan, 1941, p. 119
- ^ William Christopher Handy, Father of the Blues, New York: MacMillan, 1941, p. 87
- ^ William Christopher Handy, Father of the Blues, New York: MacMillan, 1941 no ISBN in this edition
- ^ Father of the Blues by William Christopher Handy. 1941 MacMillan page 99 no ISBN in this edition
- ^ Father of the Blues: An Autobiography. by W.C. Handy, edited by Arna Bontemps: foreword by Abbe Niles. Macmillan Company, New York; (1941) pages 142, 143. no ISBN in this first printing
- ^ Father of the Blues: An Autobiography. by W.C. Handy, edited by Arna Bontemps: foreword by Abbe Niles. Macmillan Company, New York; (1941) page 99. no ISBN in this first printing
- ^ Father of the Blues: An Autobiography. by W.C. Handy, edited by Arna Bontemps: foreword by Abbe Niles. Macmillan Company, New York; (1941) page 120. no ISBN in this first printing
- ^ a b Father of the Blues by William Christopher Handy. 1941 MacMillan page 178
- ^ Father of the Blues: An Autobiography. by W.C. Handy, edited by Arna Bontemps: foreword by Abbe Niles. Macmillan Company, New York; (1941) page 305. no ISBN in this first printing
- ^ Father of the Blues: An Autobiography. by W.C. Handy, edited by Arna Bontemps: foreword by Abbe Niles. Macmillan Company, New York; (1941) pages 99,100. no ISBN in this first printing
- ^ Broadway: An Encyclopedia by Ken Bloom - Routledge; 2 edition (November 11, 2003) ISBN 0415937043
- ^ Father of the Blues by William Christopher Handy. 1941 MacMillan page 149
- ^ Father of the Blues by William Christopher Handy. 1941 MacMillan page 195
- ^ Father of the Blues by William Christopher Handy. 1941 MacMillan pages 196-197
- ^ Escaping the Delta: Standing at the Crossroads of the Blues, Elijah Wald. 2004. HarperCollins. paperback, page 283. ISBN 0060524235
- ^ Joseph C. Smith and His Orchestra
- ^ "Joseph C. Smith and His Orchestra"
- ^ Father of the Blues by William Christopher Handy. 1941 MacMillan pages 198
- ^ Father of the Blues by William Christopher Handy. 1941 MacMillan pages 200-202
- ^ Father of the Blues by William Christopher Handy. 1941 MacMillan page 202 no ISBN in this edition
- ^ Father of the Blues: An Autobiography By W. C. Handy, Arna Wendell Bontemps Contributor Abbe Niles Published by Da Capo Press, 1991 page 267. ISBN 0306804212, 9780306804212 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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